Casanova Cocktail and conger eels: cooking with Salvador Dalí

‘When I was six years old,” Salvador Dalì once said, “I wanted to be a cook.” In 1973, he did at least publish a cookbook, Les Dîners de Gala, which is suitably potty and as far away from Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals as you could imagine. Alongside the self-aggrandising campery – photographs of himself surrounded by opulent dishes, breathing in the delicate scent of splendid wine – Dalì also added original paintings and collages, such this hotch-potch of biscuits, stew and Roquefort. The scene of war is taken from the 1529 painting The Battle of Alexander at Issus, by Albrecht Altdorfer, which shows Alexander the Great defeating Darius III of Persia in 333 BC. The book is studded with actual recipes, such as “Conger of the Rising Sun”, “Veal Cutlets Stuffed with Snails”, “Thousand Year Old Eggs”. The writing is whimsical and terribly polite. Of a crayfish consommé, Dalì hazards: “May I suggest you serve it with thin garlic toasts.” Best of all is his Casanova Cocktail: “This is quite appropriate when circumstances such as exhaustion, overwork or simply excess of sobriety are calling for a pick-me-up.”